wednesday, thursday, friday

It's been a long week. Earlier this week, I met up with Rafa and we went to a pool hall in Stadtmitte to catch up. We talked a lot about his office and the work he does, and some more personal issues he's going through right now. The bar is really cool, my new favorite. Across the street from the sleek mall [with the crappy, cheap stores], there is a driveway through the facing buildings that takes you to a small asphalt courtyard. There's an open door with a sign that reads "no one under 25 allowed," and a flight of stairs that takes you down.

The bar is dimly lit, sparsely populated, with a bright patch illuminating a few pool tables, and a dark, dark bar where every shelf is lined with various bottles of whiskey. There is also two large deli-case refrigerators filled with cold imported Belgian and French beers, mostly of the Trappist variety. The bartender pops them open and serves them up in the particular glass for that variety of beer. The various rooms are filled with old dark leather sofas and lounge chairs. It's somewhere between a dive and a country club.

There were rail strikes that day, which means that it must have been wednesday, since Rafa had a hell of a time driving into the city center. Whenever there are rail strikes, the S bahn also shuts down to nearly nothing because of the affiliated unions, and then all the commuters have to drive. Accidents and huge traffic jams clog the roads.

Thursday afternoon, I saw aunt Brenda's post about grandma's turn for the worse, it was upsetting so I left the office shortly after at 4pm. It was also in part because I wanted to try to catch grandma on FaceTime.

Aunt Brenda was there, and she connected me with her cell. I knew it was going to be our last conversation in this world.
Grandma was clearly not doing well. She was really in a bad way actually. She was mostly lucid but kept fading in and out. Brenda cheerfully conversed with me and I talked about wedding plans, life in Germany, how things were going at the office. Grandma was happy to see and hear me. Brenda and I did most of the talking, when we talked about the wedding, Grandma said that Saori was really a swell girl. Grandma started to slip more and more into sleep, we wrapped it up and I told her that I loved her, and that Saori loved her very much and we said goodbye.

That was so hard for me. And it must have been even harder for Aunt Brenda. But she was so strong.

We had chicken skewers that needed cooking that night, so I hooked up the electric grill on the patio and we had a quiet and subdued grill with tortillas.

All this in the background, and the next day I met up with Dad.

Dad happened to be in the neighborhood, so to speak, so he came down after his business trip to Norway. Actually, his flights all connected through Frankfurt, which is a little over an hour train ride from Stuttgart.

I left work early on Friday to and we met up at the large beer garten outside of the main station. He was easy to spot since he was the only person out there working on a laptop. It was a really beautiful day, and I suggested we meet up there because the weather for the weekend was forecast to be cold and rainy.

I helped dad with his luggage back to his hotel from there, we walked through Stadtmitte to the Calwer-Eck brewery where Saori saved us an outside table. I'd tried to make reservations but they wouldn't me, although I didn't understand why at the time. We were tucking into our appetizers when a group of 300 conventioners shuffled by and filed into the restraurant. Alles klar.

After dinner, we walked a bit back through the city center, and took an U bahn up the hill to get some gelato, check out the city at night.

Hope

Mom texted me yesterday to let me know grandma Case was in the hospital, with what was shortly after diagnosed as a massive heart attack. It came as a bit of surprise actually, since I've been told that non-smoking Cases are basically indestructible. When Tay and I went too visit her in January, she was surprisingly clear and sharp, especially in contrast with her friend Mrs. Head, six years her senior. Fragile, though. But still the quiet and not no quiet indomitable will she always has. And so happy to see us. I am so glad we decided to make that trip.

The Ponca hospital transferred her to Oklahoma City where she is now. Mom and Larry took off this morning and they will join Tracey and Brenda who are already there. I have heard she is weak but conscious. I hope with all my heart that she will recover quickly, aided by the love of her many family members and friends around her.

O captain my captain

I'm so excited that the new election season has kicked off. It's going to be a conservative throwdown over who is the family-valueist and trying to outdo each other's claims to dismantle the federal government. This is particularly funny to me because considering the position they are competitng over, it's like they are all campaigning to be captain of a ship by promising to scrap it

Grilli

Yesterday, we were sitting around on the wood terrasse after our typical PennyMarkt run for lunch, and Cesar, one of the Mexican interns said "So are we doing it? Barbecue tomorrow after work?"

He had been pitching this idea for a few days, including on WhatsApp, which he claims he actually proposed originally as a test of German spontaneity. Actually, everyone in the office decided to come, including Katrin, Thomas, and the secretary Petra.

So today during lunch, I threw down for some beers, some bratwurst, some charcoal, and some marinated paprika pork steaks. In Germany, chicken is the Other white meat, and beef, well, it's so American. I also came prepared with wooden plates, chopsticks for the grill, hand sanitizer, and a big vinyl blanket.

So we quit work a little after six and Cesar and I lugged the office hibichi grill up the hill to Uhlandshöhe, the hilltop, with pleasant views of the city and benches. It was nice. Saori came out, I built up the fire which turned out really nice, and people were amused by my chopsticks (but admired how deftly I could maneuver things on the grill). We ate and drank beer and chatted until ten, and called it a night, cleaning everything up and hauling it all back down the hill to the office before catching a bus back home.

In other news I started running again, 45 minutes. Lots of hills in Stuttgart. Lots of hills. I actually bought new running shorts and a cheap long sleeve running shirt from H&M. It's orange and black and I feel like a mobile road construction sign. Good to be running again though I have to get up at 6:45 every morning I want to run before work.

Also in the news: fucking allergies. But at least it's spring. With spring, finally spring, I can deal with allergies.

Five things that seem strange about Germans to an American

1) Germans use travel agents. In the age of the internet and a slew of travel deal websites, most Germans still pop over to the corner travel agency, where you can still find models of airplanes, small international souvenirs, and big posters of massive beach resorts.

2) In the rare cases where it is used, many Germans make ice in the freezer by filling an specially designed thin plastic sack with lots of little pockets. There is a clever and simple water-lock which keeps the sack of water closed when the bag is full and sitting on its side. You tear apart the sack to get to the ice.

3) Considering their history and their inclusive and accommodating federal policies, many Germans are surprisingly racist, and the way it comes across in their comments and conversation suggests they don't really see it as a racist or problematic position.

4) Many Germans think that Americans live on nothing but hamburgers, hot dogs, French fries, and a few other vaguely conceived "American" dishes. The prevalence of international food in the US is a real surprise to them.

5) Germans prefer wardrobes and free-standing cabinets rather than built-in storage or closets. Part of this stems from the design of apartments and houses where no closet space is provided, perhaps because space is at such a premium.

Duck Dynasty

One of the heads of the Duck Dynasty family recently went off on a frothy tangent about atheists. He described in detail a hypothetical situation where a family of atheists were robbed, raped, and murdered and how the violent perpetrators could say "what is the problem here if there is no divine judgment? Isn't it great that there is no real right and wrong?"

All I can say is that it is a good thing this guy believes in God, since obviously it is only his fear of hellfire which prevents him from murdering, raping, and stealing. Is he only a dog, only chained by fear of the master's lash?

I have been reading a long book about the Protestant Reformation lead by Martin Luther in a long book about Germany at the end of the middle ages. It's very interesting to get to know the characters and motivations of the major players, and the fundamental theological questions which were being asked.

When I was much younger, even as a ten year old, I remember my opposition to three major concepts we were taught in Church: 1, that I, sinner and 2, that mankind itself was irredeemable, corrupted even before consciousness, and 3, the metaphysical nature of the soul (I demanded to be shown the location of the soul on my book about the human body).

I contested the notion that I was a sinner: I sincerely felt at that age that I had lived a blameless life and actually prided myself on my righteousness by the standards of what I thought people were supposed to behave. I must admit that this position was pretty weak and if hauled before an ecclesiastical tribune, I would recant, because I have NOT led a blameless life, even by my own standard. There have been ethical failings in moments of indulgent weakness. I am not a perfect person.

But I am not Martin Luther, and these are not the 95 theses.

In a nutshell, and as I understand it, the main theological points are these:

Pre-reformation Catholic: submit to the rituals of the Church, unquestioning faith in the Church hierarchy and its spiritual authority as intermediary between you and God. You can be saved by your actions and through propitiating the Church.

Luther's Protestants: you may be dammed, you might be saved, But probably the former. You were born as one or the other and there is nothing that any mortal can do can change your final destination. This world is "the front porch of Hell." God has a direct relation to the individual and if you are really good, you may get a hint as to what your fate is. Your good deeds will not save you but maybe some things will go well for you since God is also benevolent.

Duck Dynasty there's a big angry guy in the sky with a stick and he is gonna punish you.

Palast

Today it finally started Springing again after a few more weeks of winter, so the 20somethings in my office (plus me), went to have a drink.

If you are between the ages of 16, when you can legally drink beer in Geramny, and 36 and you live in Stuttgart, odds are you have had a drink at this particular bar. If you are in your early to mid-twenties, you are probably at this bar weekly. It is one of the true loci of drinking culture in Stuttgart. People come there to meet up, and most people never actually set foot inside the bar because the bar itself is in a tiny pavillion. Most people buy beer elsewhere and sit down on the pavement in the small square where the bar is, brushing aisde broken glass and cigarette butts. The bar is a tiny pavillion because it used to be a public toilet. It is still, largely, a public toilet, and for me, the underground toilets at the bar are so squalid they come across as exotic in the surgical suite that is Germany. The name of the bar is Palast der Republik, but everyone calls it Palast (Palace).

On the walk to the bar, one of the Mexican interns chirped happily about how were out early (it was shortly after six) and how good it was going to be in the city. I felt kind of bad breaking it to her that most Germans get off work before five on Fridays.

Palast was packed. Standing room only as the little square was filled. The line for the bar (or the toilet?) stretched across the plaza so we did what everyone does: we walked the five minutes to the small overpriced grocery store by the train station and bought beer there to bring back and camp out.

Saori, unfortunately, couldn't join us because she was recovering from her root canal. Both of us have been going through the dental wringer. Earlier this week, I had three cavities filled, which cost me slightly under $200 US because I opted for the plastic instead of the metal fillings. Saori had a nasty cheek infection a month or so ago, and this was a root canal to treat the problem tooth that was the source of the infection.

The upshot is our teeth are a lot healthier and I my rogue brown tooth which makes me look like a chronic smoker is cleaned up.

This and that

Easter weekend means four days off for us: good Friday through Easter Monday. Not sure why Monday is celebrated, but I'll take it anyway.

Things I'm reading right now: A Very Short Introduction: Art Theory, uncle David's book The Death of Drawing: Architecture in the age of simulation, and A History of Modern Germany: The Reformation, all of which touch on the life and works of Thomas Aquinas, incidentally.

Things I've cooked lately: an easy chorizo penne pasta, Mexican sopa de lima, and German white asparagus soup.

Spring in Germany means white asparagus: it's on menus, in bundles at the grocery store, even sold in temporary stands like white, edible fireworks.

Today we took a short walk to rotwildpark, not far from Botnang, which is a fenced in enclosure for a small troop of boars. Two weeks ago, I was out there with Rafa and we were surprised to see a litter of tiny piglets nursing, with the characteristic watermelon striping. This time there were tons of piglets, perhaps 20 in all, bigger, the size of small dogs, still with the striping, but running around, fighting, climbing over the giant hogs and sows, and napping in big piles of other piglets.

Afterwards, we stopped into an awkward bio-center that seems to sell everything bio and had coffee and cake, which turned out to be really good. Watched The Zero Theorem__ tonight at home, which I clearly had too high hopes for.

a more succulent career

With the start of a new month, it is time to change things up. We are both tired of coming home late, working weekends, and doing architecture. Saori and I have been getting more and more into desert plants, and we were thinking, you know, we should really do something with this. Today, we handed in our two week notice to our jobs. We are going to go into business cultivating and selling cactus and succulents. It's really a natural transition for us, no pun intended. I grew up in the desert, and I am excited to tap into my expertise and enthusiasm about water conservation and sustainable landscape design. We have already drawn up plans to enclose the terrace and turn the apartment living room into a greenhouse, and we have submitted plans to our landlord to grow more plants on the roof which will substantially increase our productive area. The amazing thing about most succulents is that they self-clone. You take off a leaf, and the leaf grows a new plant! In two months, we expect to open Perkins' Pointy Plants to the public with a wide array of succulents, agave, sedum, and cacti for sale.

Please check out our website www.pointyplants.com

1 year

One year in Stuttgart down! What a year.

I have traveled a fair amount, or I should say, we have traveled a fair amount, especially since one of the main reasons I came to Germany was to be reunited with my traveling partner.

We went to a wedding in Paris, a day trip to Munich to meet an old professor, a few days back in Munich with Mom and Larry, and a long weekend in London. On business trips, I saw Innsbruck in Austria and Geneva in Switzerland. With Apo and the Mexicans we took a road trip to Venice for the architecture biennale, which was one of the events I've always wanted to attend. Saori and I day tripped through a handful of increasingly adorable southern German towns, and also a spin through Alsace, back and forth across the border to Strausburg in France. After the winter holdiays, I came back to the US for a quick road trip to check in on family in the Midwest (with apologies to mom and others in AZ), Indianapolis, Oklahoma, and Texas.

All in all, its a hell of a lot of travel. Which is good, because I do love to travel.

My German has improved dramatically since I arrived a year ago. When I arrived, I could say "the chicken." I can now say things like "He told me that he thinks the baked chicken is too salty." I have spent approximately $500 on German classes and books, which has taken me now through A2.1. (Standard courses run from A1.1, A1.2, A2.1, A2.2, B1.1 etc with mid B level considered a proficiency for university enrollment.)

Saori and I ran a 5K earlier last year, and Saori goes through cycles of three times a week yoga when she isn't taking German classes. I went on a total of three runs, including the 5k, which is not so good. However, I have been hiking on average once a month through the trails and hills around the city. Plus, we don't have a car so we are walking everywhere.

I proposed to Saori, which is a big deal and I still haven't written about it here yet or publically posted anything about it because that's a longread on its own.

My feelings on German beer changed a lot. I came over incredibly excited to drink the famous German beer, and was frustrated to quickly discover that the only beer I could find was weisen, pils, and lager. Sometimes, you want a beer with a little character. I gave up on German beer and picked up liter bottles of better beer whenever our travels crossed the border, or hit special stores where I could pick up expensive imports now and then. It's really only within the last few months that I have been picking up the quiet trail of good German beers. Ferreting out interesting beers from small towns, secret little microbreweries in the city, and rumors of bars which serve craft beers. It's not that German craft beers don't exist (actually that scene is exploding right now in Berlin), they are just really really hard to find.

However.

There is a lot to drink about here. I write about trips to London and Paris, bitch about access to good beer and Mexican food, and generally come across as a entitled, self-absorbed hipster, but it hasn't all been butterbrezeln und gummibären.

I have been filled with anxieties really since graduation, and they have waxed and waned. In Mexico, I worried about what the hell I was doing with my life, but I wanted to be with Saori so I joined her in Germany. It had been over a year since we last saw each other and we both wondered what was in the other's minds, and how we would fit into each other's lives post-university.

Finding an apartment was a huge cause of anxiety and stress. We worried if we were doing everything we could to find a place, we worried about the costs, and the bureaucratic paperwork. Additionally, it's stressful to spend every day interacting in a foreign language. Thankfully, most Germans do speak some English, but it's always something you have to ask for specially, a handicap. You will always be a tourist in a city unless you can speak its language.

We have been worrying overall about the effect of Stuttgart on our future. Here, we are both earning less money than we would be earning in the US in a major city like Boston. Our cost of living is probably the same for the lifestyle: we pay less for housing and insurance than we probably would be in Boston, but we pay more for everything else. Our employers are not matching contributions or offering a 401(k) and neither of us are currently putting money into retirement accounts. We should be saving money NOW since its going to have a major impact on the future finances, but we are also paying a lot on our student debts.

The accessibility of fantastic European cities is also a huge temptation. Probably, my grandmothers would accuse of living too 'high on the hog' but from my perspective if you are living three hours from Paris, at least one trip a year is too big a temptation to resist. Apart from our travel, we live very cheaply. We go out to eat less than once a month, we never order take out, and most of my lunches I either make at home or buy $2 package salads at the discount grocery store down the street from my office. We don't have a cable TV package (nor cable nor TV) and apart from housing and insurance my biggest monthly expenses are the $70 monthly transit pass and the fees for my German classes. And airfare to Japan and the US is not cheap either.

I worry about my career trajectory. I am 30 years old with a lot of wide experience but not so much specialist experience. Without a firm fluency in German it is difficult to run real projects here. I can't even sit down and converse with an engineer about a competition project. It is an understandable position for the office to take- what the hell do you do with a non-german speaker? I am basically a professional intern, a competition manager when required, and a graphics expert. After one year at the office, I see myself taking on some of the duties one of the two associates has. In another year or two, I would probably be working side by side, depending on how my German progresses.

How long do I want to stay here? That's the big question. Money is a big problem. Less immediate term and more long-term. We need to be making more money. This means to me that either I need to get some raises or find a job that pays me more.

Pot weekend

Thursday afternoon, I made a beer run during my lunch hour. This may seen not so special to those of you who have the good luck to live someplace where you have easy and ready access to a wide variety of good beers, but it was a big deal to me.

I heard through a friend about a small brewery in Stuttgart called Cast. The name comes from the founders, who were supposed to be a Californian and a Stuttgarter (CA-ST). The logo, actually, includes two shields, one with the Californian bear, the other with the Stuttgarter stallion. Anyway, they do small batches, bottle them all in the same brown bottles and slap on a wet-stick label when you go pick them up. There is no tasting room, no bar, not even a shop or a window. You can find the small brewery easily enough off of Schlosserstrasse, and you ring the bell.

The guy who answers the door, likely wearing an apron and galoshes, will then tell you what they have on stock as you look past him into the working brewery. This trip, I just picked up two six packs ('sixers'), one of them for the co-worker who had recommended the place. It was more expensive beer than the typical beer from the big brewers in town, who charge less than a euro a beer (not including the bottle deposit), but it was a lot cheaper than the imported or craft beers I have been finding at the British shop or the small 'sophisticated' beer section at the das Gerber grocery store. So I am excited. Apparently this place regularly brews IPAs and other ales, which are really my preferred brew.

Anyway, the beer I bought was a Roggenweißebier, a rye-wheat beer, unfiltered. Really good, although more like a weiße (wheat) beer with a hint of rye. I'm going to come back after Easter, when they will have some ales for sale.

Friday, Saori and I were going to hit a design fair in the Liederhalle but decided to take a pass since neither one of us really felt like paying $15 for the privilege to buy overpriced felted purses and 3d printed jewelry. Instead, we popped open one of the beers I had been carrying and drank as we walked over to Lumen, a hipstery place in Stuttgart west for some more beer and sweet potato fries.

We wrapped up the evening watching Big Hero 6 which is really quite a phenomenal movie from the technical graphics point of view. The movie story overall was not so good, but the graphics, wow.

This morning I made us hash browns, fried eggs, and ham, which was delicious. When I say, I made hash browns, I mean, I made them from scratch, which turns out to be easier than one might think. You grate 1 potato per person, squeeze out as much water as possible in a cheesecloth or thin and clean kitchen washtowel, and nuke it for two minutes before frying it all up. Turns out really nice. Crispy outside, chewy inside.

After cleaning up a bit, we walked across town towards Olgastrasse. First, we popped into a tiny cafe which we first mistook for an antiques shop of which it is also a part. The bearded eccentric owner had decorated the cafe with victorian-era decor including a wall of tiny deer skull trophies surrounding a silver-gelatin print of his grandmother. And there was a plastic bat hanging from one of the skull antlers. Over to a plant shop where we bought some new pots for our latest plants. It's an expensive shop, but they sell used and old pots in the loading zone behind the store, so we picked up a few cheap ones there.

After that plant shop, Rafa got back to us and asked us if we were still going to Uhlig Kakteen today. He has a car, and so we said 'YES'. We had another cup of coffee at a nearby cafe popular with the Argentines, and then Rafa drove us all over. We bought a few more plants, and a few more pots. It was fun to show Rafa the place too. It's really quite surreal. Massive white tarp covered greenhouses, eeriely quiet except for mysterious droning mechanical noises outside somewhere, endless rows of tables covered with bizarre plants. They sold us clay pots for fifty cents, too.

On the drive home, we passed a large group of people marching, protected or watched by a huge group riot police. They were marching, I believe, against homosexuality.

Anyway, we invited Rafa up for a quick bite after he dropped us off back at our apartment before he headed back out to go serve and cook at Mezcal hoch Zwei. I headed out again too, to do some last minute grocery shopping before coming back home for the night.

Updates

After about three months of a nearly unusable tablet, Google finally released a cumulative lollipop OS update this week. It's like I downloaded a brand new tablet. No more lag, no more random crashes. I have actually started to download some apps again. Like Facebook.

Also updated: my teeth. I'm paying a lot for my insurance (well, probably less than in the US) but it also covers dental. Considering dental health is a real and vital part of overall health, its another cruel and greedy trick to make people buy additional insurance in the US. Anyway, today I went to the dentist for a checkup. Two small cavities up front, two larger in the back. No co-pays, no visit fees, and if I decide to get metal fillings in the back, then its all covered by insurance. If I go plastic reisin, its €70 a pop, which is probably the same fee schedule in the US for the cotton pads they stick in your cheeks.

Spring is here! Finally! In some ways, it's terrible because you feel so happy and relieved and it makes you realize how much the shitty winter weather gets to you. But you're nearly Disney Musical level of happy so you don't think about it too much. Everyone at my office sits outside soaking up sun on the terrace during our lunches together (and often we all walk to PennyMarkt to buy our lunches) and now people are starting to meet up after work for a drink or an ice cream.

Uhlig knows his Kakteen

Saturday morning was cold and gray, so I put on some Glenn Miller and made banana pancakes. After breakfast, we say down and wrote a note to our hausmeister asking to what the antenna cable jack in the wall connects. Many German apartment buildings will come with a hausmeister, the person who acts as a landlords representative and takes responsibility for cleaning the stairs and the common spaces. He lets in workers, and accepts packages on our behalf when we are gone, so all in all, a very useful person.

Anyway, after the letter, we Skyped Saori's parents in Japan where Tim and a pregnant Ayumi are visiting with their little Joshua. Joshua is almost two now, and he gets more interactive with Skype every time I see him. It was a bit of a chaotic scene with five adults, one toddler, and the chihuahua, but fun. Saori's mom was particularly exited to have everyone there and chatting.

After Skyping, Saori and I hiked down to the S bahn station and caught a train way out beyond Vaihingen, all the way out to Uhligs Kakteen.

While we were in London, we picked up a book about succulents and cacti. There is surprisingly limited books on this topic- you have a ton of "cute display and flower arranging" type books with cacti and succulents, and, available online, massive multivolume compendia of taxonmetric characteristics of various species. Really there are very few books between the two, which would combine practical advice about propagation and care, along with the different types of plants and the kind of soil, water, and sun they need. We did find one quirky book, which was published in 2004 but all of the photos inside from the author are at least 30 years old. However, at the back of the book was a list of places one can also go to buy cacti and cacti supplies. There are ten listings for Germany alone, one of which was Uhlig Kakteen, which turned out to be very close to Stuttgart.

As Vonnegut said, strange instructions or coincidences are dancing lessons from God, so we headed out. It's a 20 minute train ride from our station, and another ten minutes walk. Rommelshausen is a boring suburb, small, and mostly surrounded by agricultural fields. We found the place easily, marked as it was by a large display of prickly pear outside.

We were Charlie in the Cactus Factory, huge greenhouses of varying temperature all filled with cacti and succulents divided into three sections: stock plants, a nursery, and for sale directly. We spent over an hour wandering though the massive place. In the end, we ended up buying some special cactus soil, some perlite and vermiculite, a few cheap pots, a half dozen baby cacti and succulents, and I splurged on a beautiful agave from Mazatlan, Mexico. Lugged it all back in a few IKEA bags we brought for the purpose except for the agave which was too pointy.

I carried the heavy stuff back to the apartment and Saori bought us lunch from the kebab place down the street and we wolfed it all down before I ran out the door to meet up with some coworkers for a drink. It was Benni's birthday the week before and he invited a bunch of us to his place. Great location, nice apartment. I was jealous of how easily it all fell into place for him, considering the stress and months of searching it took for us. (Although I can't complain about the end result- we have an amazing place for an amazing price in a good location).

I drank with my coworkers for about two hours before excusing myself early to head out to the Long Night at the Museum. Not the terrible Ben Stiller film, but a night once a year where many of the museums and institutions stay open until midnight or 2am, the bus system is reconfigured to serve particular cultural "tours" or loops, and many of the places run special programs. The prices of the tickets were a little expensive at 17 euros, but they did include transportation on the entire network from noon until 4am and all the museum entrance fees. It's a very popular event. Nearly all the museums in Stuttgart participate, and the city becomes packed.

Saori and I joined a long line at the Alte Schloss for a "through and up" tour. We were in line between an hour and 90 minutes in the castle courtyard. There was at least beer and bratwurst sold. The tour ended up being well worth the wait- the Alte Schloss mostly contains a historical museum of the region with artifacts from prehistory through contemporary times. This tour took us in the back way through the ancient and original cellers, and threaded us between ruins, working spaces, outdoor plazas, backrooms, and polished exhibitions halls by way of a series of tunnels and doors marked 'do not enter', 'emergency exit', and 'authorized personnel'. It was great. It was like jumping through portals since one minute you're in a vast ruined hall with the floor torn up to expose the old city wall foundation excavations, and you pass through a door and you're suddenly on the public street.

After this tour, we headed over to the other big item on our list- the old bunker hotel. I had heard rumors when I moved of a massive bunker under the train station , but I couldn't find anyone or anything to corroborate it. I did hear from a local tour guide about the bunker under the market platz. Only open on special occasions. Like tonight.

There was a line, but it moved a lot faster. We only waited half an hour to get in. Before WWII, or during, a large bunker was constructed under the plaza in front of the city hall. After the war, the bunker was converted into what must have been a quirky and cheap hotel. How you can get away with a hotel with no windows in a place like Germany is beyond me, but one cannot beat the location. One enters and exits by way of two openings in the pavement which are normally hidden. There is a large lobby with a bar and a reception desk, and then three long corridors with rooms off both sides. The rooms are exceptionally small- the size of a walk-in closet in many American homes. No bathroom, no window. Just a bed and a desk (in the rooms which were furnished for example). The place was filled with layers of ripped original wallpaper, mold, and decay. Alone, it would have been eerie and terrifying. Filled with excited people, it was surreal and still a little eerie. We didn't stay under too long.

Afterwards, we popped in an out of the music museum, and the big contemporary art gallery, and I realized that I was utterly exhausted. We left shortly after, about half past midnight.

al Pastor

At the edge of the Stuttgart city center, still in the pedestrianized zone, a  small mall was opened which is filled with such insignificant, trashy stores that it is anchored by Urban Outfitters. Das Gerber, as it is called, does actually have some partially redeeming features apart from the Urban Outfitters and the fact it offers new housing above the mall. In the basement, there are not one but two grocery stores.

Everyone knows I love density and downtowns, but the problem is that to live downtown, you really need to offer grocery stores downtown. So I was pleased to see there were two offered in the lower level of the mall. Aldi, the discount store, and Edeka. This Edeka is actually quite impressive. They have a really decent selection for German grocery stores, especially 'inner city' branches, and they sell different kinds of beer. In a country where the beer offerings are typically limited to what is brewed in a 30 mile radius, they sell IPAs, pale ales, American craft brews, and some Belgians. All wildly overpriced: an American made IPA, for example, can run about $4 a bottle.

I drink, on average, between three to five beers a week. Mostly during the weekend, and mostly German beer, with perhaps one exotic thrown in. If I'm drinking something brewed outside of lager and pils and hefe territory, I am going to relish it.

For example, right now, I am drinking a Warsteiner Herb, which is basically a Heineken. It is entirely unremarkable, but I was lured in by the misleading pictures of hops on the bottle.

Anyway, I am getting sidetracked here. I really wanted to talk about Mexican food. Back to the basement of Das Gerber....

...where we find a new fresh-Mex style of counter fast food called Bugan. The shop is so new, the website on the brochure isn't online yet. Normally, I skip places billing themselves as Mexican. Even in the US, I approach Mexican restaurants with extreme skepticism north of Arizona and east of Texas. This one, however, was trumpeting its al pastor.

Constant reader, you will know my feelings on al pastor since I have written about it a lot in Mexico City. A cultural adaptation from Lebanese-Mexicans, marinated pork cooked with pineapple on a vertical spit, it is the taco of Mexico City. Bugan, does in fact, correctly point out in its glossy brochure that al pastor originates there. But they get everything else wrong. For one, they are roasting chicken on a spit, not pork, and narry a pineapple in sight. Additionally, they serve it as a burrito, which is totally alien to Mexico City. It wasn't bad, to be honest, just more like a Mexican themed doner kebab. What was bad was their spelling of quesadilla as 'casadia'. That was painful.  It was like poking a wound of the distance to Mexico.

The whole experience resolved me to make more Mexican food, so I straightaway went to the Edeka and bought ingrediants to make sopa de lima, a limey chicken soup from the yucatan.

mein kleiner, greuner, kaktus

So begins a rather silly song which was popularized by the German group 'The Comedian Harmonists' who were apparently one of the most popular musical groups in Europe before the outbreak of WWII.

The song, which begins: My small, green cactus sits on my balcony, was very popular, and even at the early time suggests to me the popularity of cacti in Germany. One has to admit this is a little strange on the face of it.

Cacti and other succulents, which are also very popular here, are much more at home in drought-prone, warm, sunny places with rocky and sandy soils.  Most of Germany has warm summers, but freezing winters, dense treecover, and lots of overcast skies and rain.  However, here in Southern Germany, one can see them gracing many balconies and sold in many stores. So what's the appeal to Germans?

Two theories- I have noticed that Germans love exotica in general, but only in carefully controlled form. There is a fascination with 'wild' tribes, especially north American, and 'savage' craftwork of African peoples. Cactus and succulents conjure up images of the exotic, sunny lands far from the gray and tidy set of blocks which are most German cities.

There is also the history- the earliest, best, and most thorough scholarship of succulents has been by German authors. German botanists traveled through Africa and South and Central America, making careful notes and drawings documenting the strange plant forms they saw. Perhaps, by bringing attention to the results of their works (which were naturally in German), they captured the imagination of their countrymen and made cacti popular in Germany before the rest of the world took notice.

While one can find plenty of Opuntia and other cacti native to Mexico here, we have had difficulty finding succulents from the Americas here. Most of the succulents come from South America. I bought a small prickly pear cactus which reminds me of Arizona and Mexico, but I would really like to find some agaves. Most of the agave-type plants here are actually aloes, native to southern Africa.

London calling

After a particularly onerous weekend at work and several long weeks of competitions, we decided we needed to get the scheiße out of Stuttgart. By a rather fortuitous coincidence, Stuttgart is located very close to vastly more interesting and exciting cities. Like London.

We caught a 9am flight out of Stuttgart to Frankfurt, and thence on to London. It's awkward. The flight time to Frankfurt is a scant 25 minutes: it took us double that to run the labyrinth between terminals and immigration and security checkpoints to board the flight to Heathrow. The UK's awkward part-of-the-EU, not-part-of-the-EU makes it awkward for tourists coming from the continent.

Flight to London was about an hour. The cloudy skies over the continent stopped at the edge, and we had an amazing view to look out over the English channel. In one view, the long shoreline and beaches of France and the white cliffs of Dover and England, with tiny cargo ships plying the channel. From above, the sediment laden water from the Thames is easy to spot as it flows into the sea. Our route took us up the Thames, and we landed in London a little after 11AM.

Breezed through customs, and picked up an oyster card at the tube station. The harried ticket sellers explained that we pay £5 for the card, refundable on return, and load up the card to tap our way through turnstile's on tubes or busses.

Piccadilly line runs to the center of London, but it's a long haul. 50 minutes from station to station. It was so exciting to be back in London, although tinged with the sadness that we wouldn't be returning to the hospitality and countryside of The Pines in Milford.

London was bright and chilly. We had pricelined a hotel near Euston station in Camden, and dropped off the luggage before hunting down some food. We were able to grab bar seats at a trendy ramen restaurant, Ippudo. When we walked in the staff shouted greetings at us. We toasted not being at work with pints of cold Asahi and tucked into our delicious steaming bowls of ramen with fried pork.

The rest of the day saw us make a stroll along Oxford st where I stocked up on (what else?) Oxford shirts at Japanese Gap meets American Apparel store UNIQLO. For dinner we headed over to Kensington, to the Natural History Museum.

It was one of their late nights, where they are open until 10pm and serve food and beer. It was surprisingly popular. Tons of people, mostly hip late 20s to late 30s Londoners kicking off the night. I've always loved this museums architecture much more than the exhibitions, which are kooky and surreal at the best of times and simply dated and disgustingly decomposed at worst. It is, I must say, a fantastic place to have a drink. The beer was served from a makeshift bar in front of a massive glass case housing a giant bird, presumably extinct, stuffed with a quizzical expression.

They was also something about the sight of dozens of empty bottles (many of which were obviously brought from outside) sitting on a table in front of a directional sign MAMMALS. One could almost read it like an exasperated exclamation of dismay over the effect of the bottles' contents on mammalian brains.

We lingered through the venerable halls with our beers until everyone was asked to leave by the harried staff anxious to close before ten. We went back to the hotel directly, since we were also really tired from the early day and travel.

The game is afoot

Saturday morning, I caffeinated Saori and we went across town to the Broadway market in East London. East London is apparently the hip new place to those people "in the know" and it was, actually, swimming with hipsters and other young urbanites. The New York Timesactually published a "36 Hours in East London" a year or two ago, which I relied on heavily to create the day's itinerary.

No Tube stop near the market so we got to figure out the buses which turned out to be my new favorite way across London. When I'm using the Tube, the feeling I get is like a fish fighting it's way upstream to spawn through the tunnels of a massive hydroelectric dam. When I use the iconic double decker bus, it's like we getting a free city tour, floating between buildings and watching the city stitch itself together.

The market was fun. Fresh baked breads, craft jewelry and pottery, felted hot water bottle covers, way-to-cute woven socks with foxes on then, screen prints, Vietnamese food trucks, organic free trade coffee shops with poppy accent colors and weathered wood tables, and even some shops which were around before gentrification. In short: the accoutrements of the good, instagramable, life.

We bought some delicious baked thing with nuts which was something between a croissant and a muffin from an old table at the entry to a warehouse, behind which was the actual independent bakery. We also bought a small ceramic hanging planter for our apartment.

After wandering through the market we waked along Regent's canal, a waterway with a pedestrian path alongside filled with runners. It's a cool area. Old, industrial, blue collar, but filling in with artists and bohemian creatives, the harbingers of gentrification.

We went to a recommended Bangladeshi restaurant near Spitalfields market, another market, this one specializing in handmade, boutique, and vintage clothing. The area, incidentally, is a huge immigrant center, with a historic Bangladeshi community. We were the first customers of the day at Monsoon, but the food was good. Ordered garlic naan, mushroom rice, a lamb bindi, and a prawn curry of some kind. Not so obviously spicy at first bite, but builds to a deep, slow kick.

The the street is actually overflowing with Bangladesh restaurants: part of the challenge was getting the attention of our waiter who would fairly leap out of the restaurant at anyone who as much as slowed down in order to entice them in.

After lunch we stopped at a pub and I got my first cask British pint of the trip. The pub was modern, bright, airy, with a carefully constructed weathered industrial look. I started calling it the Anthropologie Pub. Outside, a young architect was intently measuring the front entry. We were curious about what he was doing so I asked him.

Between scribbling measurements, he told me. Many bars and pubs lack back entry's and loading zones. Beer comes in giant metal or wood kegs, which are quickly dropped off on the porch of the entry . Then, the walk-off mat flips up revealing a chute in the floor to the basement. The problem is that the kegs bang up the porch floor when they hit. It was true: many of the tiles were missing or broken. He was going to replace it, he said, with rubberized athletic gym flooring.

After our pint, we bussed back to central London by way of the financial district, and from there, walked over the bridge to the Southbank center. We ended up browsing through the bookstores, perusing the food market and finally split some curry. After dark, we followed the exited stream of people back to Waterloo station. Waterloo made me miss dad and Tay particularly, since this was always the way I entered the city coming from the Surrey countryside.

We went back to our neighborhood, and walked from the Baker Street apartment and museum of Sherlock Holmes, to nearby North Gower, where they shoot the TV series. In the dark and rain, we stopped in front of Speedy's cafe, and the apartment which is the stand in for 221b.

We had a few pints more at the nearby pub, the Anchor, which was mercifully free of Sherlock tie-ins. No Eggs Benedict Cumberbatch, Morijitos, or Moffat Fries. For me, just beer and some STP.

London sunday

Sunday morning was a delight. The night before, I had made a reservation for the Sunday Coffee concert at Wigmore hall. These are concerts featuring up-and-coming classical virtuosos and small groups, an hour long performance followed by complimentary coffee or sherry. A steal at 12 pounds a ticket.

Saori picked out a breakfast place, the Riding House Cafe (21 on Zagat) which happened to be along the way in Fitzrovia. We showed up at 9:40, nervous about making the 11:30 concert, and with good reason. The place was bustling with activity, and the hostess asked if we had made a reservation for brunch. She put our name down and told us to wander around the neighborhood for 20 minutes.

We did, and when we came back, we were promptly seated. I was worried about the speed of service, but it was lighting. We were seated at 10:00 and had paid the bill by 10:30. It sounds fast, but it was actually quite perfect. We both ordered the big British breakfast: toast, poached eggs, breakfast beans, black pudding, and sausage. Everything was delicious. Clearly, they had taken great pains in the sourcing of their ingredients and meats. The coffee was fantastic.

From there, we had enough time to stroll through the posh neighborhoods to Wigmore hall, a turn of the century chamber music hall. Our seats were unfortunately at the back, but I was happy to have secured seats to the sold-out performance. The artist this morning was a young woman named Beatrice Rana, who played intense selections from Bach, Chopin, and Ravel on piano, including the famous Funeral March. She was very, very good. Lots of thunder from a piano, actually. After, we enjoyed our glass of sherry, and made our way to the exit and another swing through UNIQLO to pick up another few work shirts for me. Relatively cheap, good quality, good cut.

We caught the bus from Oxford street across the Thames and hopped out at the Southbank centre where we walked over to the Tate modern. They were building a new addition, also by H+dM but it wasn't very promising to me. The installation in the main hall was also disappointing, a fabric and wood piece by an American artist, which looked like the designers of the Beatles yellow submarine had tried their hand at aircraft and gave up halfway. We poked through the bookstores (we spent a lot of time in bookstores this trip) and headed across the Millenium bridge towards St. Pauls. We were starving by the time we got across so we poked into a few pubs, and resigned ourselves to a mediocre tourist trap near the church.

We knew it was a mediocre tourist trap going in. But one of the best rules of travel is to eat when you are hungry. The experience was exactly as expected. The food was mediocre, the service sucked, and they blared contemporary radio hits. At least it wasn't ungodly expensive. It will be quickly forgotten from our collective memory.

We took another bus back to Soho, where we wandered around

Holmes

It's been a busy few weeks since I last wrote. This weekend, I had to go into the office for a few hours Saturday, and today was Saori's turn to go in while I stayed home, cooked, and did my German homework. Made a pretty good red lentils and a spicy, but top form, Aloo Gobi.

Even as our workload increases, we've started watching a little more TV, to wind down a bit, usually on weekend nights. Not German TV, but a few episodes of highly regarded shows. A few episodes of the new __Cosmos_ , a few episodes of the original Cosmos, and then, Sherlock. I watched an episode when I was back in Phoenix, and I really enjoyed it, so I suggested we watch from the beginning. The first season was magic, great stuff. Second season was really lukewarm, and we are now just finished with the first episode of season 3, which is better than the second season so far. The sad thing about this series is that each season is only three episodes long, but at least you can get caught up quickly. I'm just happy that we didn't have to wait the two years between seasons 1 and 2. The shows pushed Saori and I back to the books and we've been talking about the differences between the TV Sherlock and Doyle's detective.

Winter is leaving us in the same way it arrived: apathetic, banal, and miserable. The last month has been always a few degrees north and south of freezing and around 80% humidity. No snow, no sun, no crispness of a sharply freezing day , it just drizzles as the damp cold soaks itself into your bones. This year's weather is a series of sulky teenagers.

I'd nearly forgotten the conversations I had with a reporter about donuts in Phoenix awhile back, until a friend posted the article to my Facebook wall. Good mentions, and now Saori calls me "Dr. Donut".

Sweet tooth

Several days ago, Saori's toothache turned into a swollen cheek and a rather painful tooth. The dentists offered to see her four days later, but she said it was really really painful so they made an appointment for a day and a morning later.

There, they sliced open her inner cheek to drain the blood and pus, stuffed in some sponge and told her to come back the next day. I was a bit surprised they didn't start her on antibiotics immediately, actually. They are incredibly over used, but when the situation is clearly bacterial, why prolong the pain and infection?

She went back the following morning (Friday) and they did some more clearing out. She said the office was fast and efficient, and they took x rays, but really have not been explaining what is going on with her tooth or cheek. This time they gave her a prescription for antibiotics and a receipt for the hospital emergency dental surgery clinic if her cheek for worse over the weekend. No copay for any of her visits.

It's an interesting contrast to the US system. On the one hand, I was uncomfortable with the fact that she had to wait days to see a dentist when she really had a painful infection. It also sounds like the medical community here does not usually waste their time talking through the problems with the patient, any more than a mechanic spends time explaining the problems to a car. I can understand the reticence to use antibiotics. However, the medical costs are manageable. If it turns out she needs a root canal, and if for any reason, her insurance doesn't cover it. The cost is €800. This is less than what I spent on my root canal in Mexico and less what I paid even WITH insurance in the US.

Anyway, slit cheeks and dental work make for poor timing as far as valentines day go, so we decided to postpone our dinner out until Saori could actually eat something.

I did buy her a small pot of roses (and today, potting soil, thorn resistant gloves, etc) and in return, she baked me gateau du chocolat, a decadent chocolate tart.

Friday night, we watched the first two episodes of Sherlock and we were quickly hooked. Watched another episode tonight with my dinner dish of pan fried brussel sprouts with shallots and bacon.

We have also been on a bit of a theoretical physics kick lately, watching episodes (old and new) of Cosmos, discussing the wave-particle duality of light, and other gravitational topics. It started from watching Interstellar a few weeks ago, and followed by Contact.